The Vlad the Impaler Treatment


If Vlad the Impaler had only staked his tomatoes, he would have gone down in history in a completely different way.

It turns out that tomatoes desperately need staking. If you don't stake them, the minute tomatoes start appearing, they're going to drag the vines down onto the ground. Ask me how I know.

But I'll bet that you don't have to ask, because you can guess.

Before

After about 1.5 hours of sticking stakes in the ground and tying tomato vines to them with jute twine.


See any resemblance? 











 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stairway Complete; Fruit & Vegetable Season Begins

Image
Just one day's haul of raspberries The garden is truly coming into its own. There's a certain point in the spring when you think, "Nah, we're never getting anything." Well, we're past that point now. Kiki made white chocolate raspberry scones with these. She also made beet-burgers (or, really, more beet sloppy Joe's): But the big news is that a major project - the stairway from the shed to the garage - is finally complete, and I can die happy.  
Read more

In which I magically make 5 pounds of tomatoes disappear

Image
 And made a very successful batch of ketchup.  Or catsup. The cats were up as I began the messiest of messy tasks, but they grew weary and abandoned me to my red nightmare. If you want to give up most of your morning while handling many containers of very threatening red stuff, make your own condiment!  I had planned to snap a photo of the process but where to even pause and do so? There was no respite once it began. So, all I have in what is left of the final result. Sorry. Terrible let down, really.  As for the artistry of the process, let my words be your eyes... Imagine- a colander heaping over with 5 pounds (about) of bright red tomatoes and three ripe plums. See the onion and garlic gently cooking in olive oil in the bottom of my bright red Dansk enameled pot? Gaze as the tomatoes get added once they have been coarsely chopped. They cook for 15 minutes until all the small cherry tomatoes have burst and the very full pot is bubbling -suddenly, in go the plums! T...
Read more

Action Time

Image
There's a time for planning, and a time for philosophizing, and a time when you absolutely need to do the things and have little time for recording progress. This is one of the latter. Spring in Minnesota moves swiftly. One minute, there are howling winds, everything is grey, icy, and cold. Then BAM! Everything is green. Trees have leafed out. Lilacs are blooming. Dandelions are bursting forth.  Most importantly, the plans that have been made must be fulfilled. Beds need to be cleaned out and planted.  We've made some good progress. Beets, lettuce, rocket, zucchini, kale, strawberries, raspberries, sunflowers, pumpkins, three kinds of acorn squash, parsnips, nasturtiums (sadly misspelled in the plans), marigolds, and cosmos are planted. Tulips have nearly run their course. Daffodils are about done. Crocus are long gone. Clover has popped out of last year's slag from the stairway excavations.  Sadly, because we were on vacation in Maine over the weekend of the 6th to visit...
Read more